Instead of revolution:
Wolnpcki, Miron J
REPORT FROM POLAND INSTEAD OF REVOLUTION PROSPECTS FOR POWER SHARING The agreement signed on April 5 by Solidarity with Jf the Polish government represents a truly historic compromise. Seven...
...This is not going to add popularity to the union...
...In addition, obtaining credits from the World Bank and IMF, and gaining admission to GATT, represent no small prize for the government...
...that a market solution to the crisis will require free, but higher, prices...
...that reform will mean shutting down inefficient plants, which will mean unemployment...
...Solidarity may become more polarized, but so will the party...
...Moreover, the transformation of state ownership into worker ownership, which Solidarity is likely to promote, will defuse some industrial conflicts and create a new class of career managers and professionals outside the party nomenklatura...
...without them perestroika in the socialist world is impossible...
...Marketization and privatization will offer them an alternative to join the new class of socialist capitalists...
...The risks for Solidarity are high...
...President Bush has proposed an economic package to ease Poland's debt crisis...
...liberals have already realized that their survival is going to depend on power sharing...
...A likely future scenario is for political choice outside the party and Solidarity to broaden as new parties substitute for the bloc presently controlled by the party...
...Independent labor leaders will have to tell workers that strikes are bad...
...Lech Walesa talks of running for president only a few years after being the most famous persona non grata in the country...
...it will not mean that independent candidates will be able to win the support for all their reform proposals, but for most of there will mean that Solidarity will have not ten million members, bis considerably fewer...
...In 1981, the party demanded Solidarity's self-limitation using the threat of Soviet invasion...
...Seven years after banning Solidar-H ity, Poland's Communist leaders have agreed to H share their monopoly of power with it...
...What are the prospects for this unusual concordat...
...If the union is going to take an active part in the economic reform, it will have to reconcile macroeconomic probity with the traditional functions of the trade onion...
...Moreover, local bureaucrats accustomed to party protection will have to seek democratic endorsement or leave their jobs and privileges...
...Having entered Polish politics as an official force, Solidarity will have to seek popular support not through Walesa's charisma, but through an electoral mandate for its candidates and policies...
...Party liberals accept the fact that there is an independent society in exchange for Solidarity's willingness to partake in the elections...
...An independent union, actively and credibly soliciting Western loans, could be a tactical ploy used by the government to shift responsibility for dealing with the country's debt onto the shoulders of labor...
...This solution to power, sharing will not mean an end to all strikes after the elections, but probably will mean fewer of them...
...However, such self-limitation now may come for both sides from democratic mechanisms...
...Mid-level security personnel, judges, and prosecutors will be accountable before the legislative branch of the government, while apostate Communist party liberals will be challenged by conservatives...
...Token parliamentary opposition candidates of the Polish Peasant Party (ZSL), the Democratic Front (SD), Pax (Catholic Front), and the Christian-Social Union, together with Solidarity candidates, are likely to leave embarrassingly few seats for the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP) in the Senate...
...Paradoxically, the possibilities for the transition of power described here were not created in Warsaw, but in Moscow...
...If new credits are offered by the Western governments in response to a plea by Lech Walesa, the union leader may be asked in Bonn or Washington to offer an implicit guarantee that the Polish government is not going to spend it on inefficient steel plants or dachas for the nomenklatura, or allow it to be eaten up by wage inflation...
...The Communist party is to hold a marginal majority in the lower house of Parliament, while free elections will decide the composition of the reestablished Senate...
...The agreement between the party and Solidarity may have many shortcomings, but it is viable...
...But, Solidarity candidates are aware that cooperation with the government is going to cost them the support of the opposition-left and radical union factions...
...For their part, Solidarity is not likely to choose revolution after evolutionary means have restored its official existence...
...Observers of Polish compromise wonder: Who has won...
...The ascent to power of Mikhail Gorbachev has meant that conservatives have lost their legitimacy as the executors of plausible limits imposed by the Kremlin...
...On balance, the overall effectiveness of the power structure-with participating opposition-is going to improve considerably...
...There, they will meet many of today's union members who will find out that the private sector can provide them with a better opportunity for material and personal satisfaction than the state sector...
...A new majority based on a coalition of liberal Communists and Solidarity candidates could become part of a center capable of providing electoral support for the reforms by requiring compromise of all parties involved...
...They will try to persuade younger and more impatient members of the opposition to boycott Solidarity's candidates...
...At the time of future elections, the situation may look quite different...
...Yet, only a few hundred people cheered a tired Walesa and his negotiating team when they left the government building after concluding two months of marathon talks-an apparent contrast to the enthusiastic thousands who acclaimed the union leader in 1980 and 19811 Though Lech Walesa still enjoys enormous popularity, the symbolism of that moment was quite obvious...
...It may, perhaps, create an unusual collusion of interest between the opposition-left and the party hard-liners...
...One immediate benefit for the government is clear...
...Gorbachev is the first Soviet leader to understand that the strongest forces for reform are antitotalitarian...
...Accepting electoral challenge may be even riskier for the Communist party than for Solidarity...
...MIRON J. WOLNICKI MIRON J. WOLNICKI...
...However, the zero sum situation that dominated Polish politics in 1981 does not necessarily apply today...
...Prominent Solidarity members such as Andrzej Gwiazda or Jerzy Kropiwnicki, splinter groups called "Fighting Solidarity," and the radical movement, "Committee for Independent Poland," have openly criticized Walesa...
...Which side has shown more political and tactical foresight and who, ultimately, is going to gain more from the agreement...
...Some predict that four years from now the Communists will lose the elections, but then refuse to yield power to Solidarity...
...Much can change in four years...
...If so, confrontation would be unavoidable...
...He is taken seriously by all parties...
...In this sense, Poland is the first East European Communist country to take advantage of the winds of democracy blowing from Russia...
...What will happen to those among the party nomenklatura who will lose their positions...
Vol. 116 • May 1986 • No. 10
